Wine User Guide

Wine User Guide

Table of Contents
1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. 1
Overview / About.................................................................................................................................................. 1
What is Wine?....................................................................................................................................................... 2
Versions of Wine................................................................................................................................................... 3
Alternatives to Wine you might want to consider................................................................................................. 3
2. Getting Wine ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Wine Installation Methods.................................................................................................................................... 5
Installing Wine from a package ............................................................................................................................ 5
Installing Wine from source ................................................................................................................................. 6
3. Running Wine ........................................................................................................................................................... 8
Basic usage: applications and control panel applets............................................................................................. 8
How to run Wine................................................................................................................................................... 8
Explorer-like graphical Wine environments ......................................................................................................... 9
Wine Command Line Options .............................................................................................................................. 9
Environment variables .......................................................................................................................................... 9
wineserver Command Line Options .................................................................................................................. 10
Setting Windows/DOS environment variables ................................................................................................... 11
Text mode programs (CUI: Console User Interface).......................................................................................... 12
4. Configuring Wine ................................................................................................................................................... 16
Using Winecfg .................................................................................................................................................... 16
Using the Registry and Regedit .......................................................................................................................... 19
Other Things to Configure .................................................................................................................................. 21
5. Troubleshooting / Reporting bugs......................................................................................................................... 24
What to do if some program still doesnt work? ................................................................................................ 24
How To Report A Bug ........................................................................................................................................ 25
Glossary....................................................................................................................................................................... 26

iii

Chapter 1. Introduction
Overview / About
Purpose of this document and intended audience
This document, called the Wine User Guide, is both an easy installation guide and an extensive reference guide. This
guide is for both the new Wine user and the experienced Wine user, offering full step-by-step installation and
configuration instructions, as well as featuring extensive reference material by documenting all configuration
features and support areas.

Further questions and comments

If, after examining this guide, the FAQ (http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ), and other relevant documentation there is still
something you cannot figure out, we would love to hear from you. The mailing lists
(http://www.winehq.org/site/forums) section contains several mailing lists and an IRC channel, all of which are great
places to seek help and offer suggestions. If you are particularly savvy, and believe that something can be explained
better, you can file a bug report (http://bugs.winehq.org/) or post a patch (http://wiki.winehq.org/SubmittingPatches)
on Wine documentation itself.

Content overview / Steps to take

In order to be able to use Wine, you must first have a working installation. This guide will help you to move your
system from an empty, Wineless void to one boasting a fresh, up to date Wine install. The first step, Getting Wine,
illustrates the various methods of getting Wines files onto your computer. The second step, Configuring Wine, shows
how to customize a Wine installation depending on your individual needs. The final step, Running Wine, covers the
specific steps you can take to get a particular application to run better under Wine, and provides useful links in case
you need further help.

Quick start
The process of installing and running Wine can be summarised as follows:

Get a distribution as indicated in Getting Wine and see the Wine Downloads
(http://www.winehq.org/site/download) page. For the casual or new user the simplest is to get a packaged version
for your distribution.

Optionally configure Wine using the winecfg command. Wine should work without any additional configuration
options.

To test your installation run Wine notepad clone using the wine notepad command.

Check the Wine AppDB (http://appdb.winehq.org) for specific instructions or steps required to install or run your
application.

Run Wine using the wine path/to/appname.exe command.

The first command you will run will be to install an application. Typically something like wine
/media/cdrom/setup.exe or the equivalent path might be used to install an application from CD.

Chapter 1. Introduction

What is Wine?
Windows and Linux
Different software programs are designed for different operating systems, and most wont work on systems that they
werent designed for. Windows programs, for example, wont run in Linux because they contain instructions that the
system cant understand until theyre translated by the Windows environment. Linux programs, likewise, wont run
under the Windows operating system because Windows is unable to interpret all of their instructions.
This situation presents a fundamental problem for anyone who wants to run software for both Windows and Linux. A
common solution to this problem is to install both operating systems on the same computer, known as dual
booting. When a Windows program is needed, the user boots the machine into Windows to run it; when a Linux
program is then needed, the user then reboots the machine into Linux. This option presents great difficulty: not only
must the user endure the frustration of frequent rebooting, but programs for both platforms cant be run
simultaneously. Having Windows on a system also creates an added burden: the software is expensive, requires a
separate disk partition, and is unable to read most filesystem formats, making the sharing of data between operating
systems difficult.

What is Wine, and how can it help me?

Wine makes it possible to run Windows programs alongside any Unix-like operating system, particularly Linux. At
its heart, Wine is an implementation of the Windows Application Programing Interface (API) library, acting as a
bridge between the Windows program and Linux. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer, when a Windows program
tries to perform a function that Linux doesnt normally understand, Wine will translate that programs instruction
into one supported by the system. For example, if a program asks the system to create a Windows pushbutton or
text-edit field, Wine will convert that instruction into its Linux equivalent in the form of a command to the window
manager using the standard X11 protocol.
If you have access to the Windows program source code, Wine can also be used to recompile a program into a format
that Linux can understand more easily. Wine is still needed to launch the program in its recompiled form, however
there are many advantages to compiling a Windows program natively within Linux. For more information, see the
Winelib User Guide.

Wine features
Throughout the course of its development, Wine has continually grown in the features it carries and the programs it
can run. A partial list of these features follows:

Support for running Win64, Win32 (Win 95/98, NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7), Win16 (Win 3.1) and DOS
programs

Optional use of external vendor DLL files (such as those included with Windows)

X11-based graphics display, allowing remote display to any X terminal, as well as a text mode console

Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows

DirectX support for games

Good support for various sound drivers including OSS and ALSA

Chapter 1. Introduction

Support for alternative input devices such as graphics tablets.

Printing: PostScript interface driver (psdrv) to standard Unix PostScript print services

Modem, serial device support

Winsock TCP/IP networking support

ASPI interface (SCSI) support for scanners, CD writers, and other devices

Advanced Unicode and foreign language support

Full-featured Wine debugger and configurable trace logging messages for easier troubleshooting

Versions of Wine
Wine from WineHQ
Wine is an open source project, and there are accordingly many different versions of Wine for you to choose from.
The standard version of Wine comes in intermittent releases (roughly twice a month), and can be downloaded over
the Internet in both prepackaged binary form and ready to compile source code form. Alternatively, you can install a
development version of Wine by using the latest available source code from the Git repository. See the next chapter,
Getting Wine, for further details.

Other Versions of Wine

There are a number of programs that are derived from the standard Wine codebase in some way or another. Some of
these are commercial products from companies that actively contribute to the Wine project.
These products try to stand out or distinguish themselves from the standard version of Wine by offering greater
compatibility, easier configuration, and commercial support. If you require such things, it is a good idea to consider
purchasing these products.
Table 1-1. Various Wine offerings
Product

Description

CodeWeavers CrossOver Office

CrossOver Office allows you to
(http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office)
install your favorite Windows
productivity applications in Linux,
without needing a Microsoft
Operating System license.
CrossOver includes an easy to use,
single click interface, which makes
installing a Windows application
simple and fast.

Distribution Form
Commercial; 30-day
fully-functional demo available.

Alternatives to Wine you might want to consider

There are many ways to run software other than through Wine. If you are considering using Wine to run an
application you might want to think about the viability of these approaches if you encounter difficulty.

Chapter 1. Introduction

Native Applications
Instead of running a particular Windows application with Wine, one frequently viable alternative is to simply run a
different application. Many Windows applications, particularly more commonly used ones such as media players,
instant messengers, and filesharing programs have very good open source equivalents. Furthermore, a sizable number
of Windows programs have been ported to Linux directly, eliminating the need for Wine (or Windows) entirely.
These alternatives should be found through your system package management facilities.

Another Operating System

Probably the most obvious method of getting a Windows application to run is to simply run it on Windows. However,
security, license cost, backward-compatibility, and machine efficiency issues can make this a difficult proposition,
which is why Wine is so useful in the first place.
Another alternative is to use ReactOS (http://www.reactos.com), which is a fully open source alternative to
Windows. ReactOS shares code heavily with the Wine project, but rather than running Windows applications on top
of Linux they are instead run on top of the ReactOS kernel. ReactOS also offers compatibility with Windows driver
files, allowing the use of hardware without functional Linux drivers.

Virtual Machines
Rather than installing an entirely new operating system on your machine, you can instead run a virtual machine at the
software level and install a different operating system on it. Thus, you could run a Linux system and at the same time
run Windows along with your application in a virtual machine simultaneously on the same hardware. Virtual
machines allow you to install and run not only different versions of Windows on the same hardware, but also other
operating systems, including ReactOS.
There are several different virtual machine offerings out there, and some are also able to emulate x86 hardware on
different platforms. The open source Bochs (http://bochs.sourceforge.net/), VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/)
and QEMU (http://www.qemu.org/) can run both Windows and ReactOS virtually. Other, commercial virtual
machine offerings include VMware (http://www.vmware.com/) and Microsofts VirtualPC
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/).
There are significant drawbacks to using virtual machines, however. Unlike Wine, such programs are emulators, so
there is an inevitable speed decrease which can be quite substantial. Furthermore, running an application inside a
virtual machine prevents fully integrating the application within the current environment. You wont, for example, be
able to have windows system tray icons or program shortcuts sitting alongside your desktop Linux ones, since
instead the Windows applications must reside completely within the virtual machine.

Chapter 2. Getting Wine

Wine Installation Methods
Once youve decided that Wine is right for your needs, the next step is to decide how you want to install it. There are
three methods for installing Wine from WineHQ, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Installation from a package

By far the easiest method for installing Wine is to use a prepackaged version of Wine. These packages contain
ready-to-run Wine binary files specifically compiled for your distribution, and they are tested regularly by the
packagers for both functionality and completeness.
Packages are the recommended method for installing Wine. We make them easily available at the WineHQ
downloads page (http://www.winehq.org/site/download), and these are always the latest packages available. Being
popular, Wine packages can also be found elsewhere in official distribution repositories. These can, however,
sometimes be out of date, depending on the distribution. Packages are easily upgradable as well, and many
distributions can upgrade Wine seamlessly with a few clicks. Building your own installable binary package from a
source package is also possible, although it is beyond the scope of this guide.

Installation from a source archive

Sometimes the Wine packages dont fit your needs exactly. Perhaps theyre not available for your architecture or
distribution, or perhaps you want to build Wine using your own compiler optimizations or with some options
disabled, or perhaps you need to modify a specific part of the source code before compilation. Being an open source
project, you are free to do all of these things with Wine source code, which is provided with every Wine release. This
method of installation can be done by downloading a Wine source archive and compiling from the command line. If
you are comfortable with such things and have special needs, this option may be for you.
Getting Wine source archives is simple. Every release, we put a source package in compressed tar.bz2 format at
the WineHQ downloads page (http://www.winehq.org/site/download). Compiling and installing Wine from source is
slightly more difficult than using a package, however we will cover it in depth and attempt to hold your hand along
the way.

Installation from a Git tree

If you wish to try out the bleeding edge of Wine development, or would even like to help develop Wine yourself, you
can download the very latest source code from our Git repository. Instructions for downloading from the Wine Git
repository are available at http://www.winehq.org/site/git.
Please take note that the usual warnings for using a developmental version still apply. The source code on the Git
repository is largely untested and may not even compile properly. It is, however, the best way to test out how Wine
will work in the next release, and if youre modifying source code its best to get the latest copy. The Git repository is
also useful for application maintainers interested in testing if an application will still work right for the next release,
or if a recent patch actually improves things. If youre interested in helping us to get an application working in Wine,
see the HowTo (http://www.winehq.org/site/howto).

Chapter 2. Getting Wine

Installing Wine from a package

Installing a fresh package
Installing a package on a fresh system is remarkably straightforward. Simply download and install the package using
whatever utility your distribution provides. There is usually no need to explicitly remove old packages before
installing, as modern Linux distributions should upgrade and replace them automatically. If you installed Wine from
source code, however, you should remove it before installing a Wine package. See the section on uninstalling Wine
from source for proper instructions.

Different Distributions
Wine works on a huge amount of different Linux distributions, as well other Unix-like systems such as Solaris and
FreeBSD, each with their own specific way of installing and managing packages. Fortunately, however, the same
general ideas apply to all of them, and installing Wine should be no more difficult than installing any other software,
no matter what distribution you use. Uninstalling Wine packages is simple as well, and in modern Linux distributions
is usually done through the same easy interface as package installation.
We wont cover the specifics of installing or uninstalling Wine packages among the various systems methods of
packaging and package management in this guide, however, up to date installation notes for particular distributions
can be found at the WineHQ website in the HowTo (http://www.winehq.org/site/howto). If you need further help
figuring out how to simply install a Wine package, we suggest consulting your distributions documentation, support
forums, or IRC channels.

Installing Wine from source

Before installing Wine from source, make sure you uninstall any Wine binary packages you may have on your
system. Installing from source requires use of the terminal window as well as a full copy of the Wine source code.
Once having downloaded the source from Git or extracted it from an archive, navigate to it using the terminal and
then follow the remaining steps.

Getting the Build Dependencies

Wine makes use of many open source libraries during its operation. While Wine is not strictly dependent on these
libraries and will compile without most of them, much of Wine functionality is improved by having them available at
compile time. In the past, many user problems were caused by people not having the necessary development libraries
when they built Wine from source; because of this reason and others, we highly recommend installing via binary
packages or by building source packages which can automatically satisfy their build dependencies.
If you wish to install build dependencies by hand, there are several ways to see if youre missing some useful
development libraries. The most straightforward approach is to watch the output of configure before you compile
Wine and see if anything important is missing; if it is, simply install whats missing and rerun configure before
compiling. You can also check the file configure generates (include/config.h) and see what files configure is
looking for but not finding.

Compiling Wine
Once youve installed the build dependencies you need, youre ready to compile the package. In the terminal
window, after having navigated to the Wine source tree, run the following commands:
$ ./configure

Chapter 2. Getting Wine

$ make depend
$ make
# make install

The last command requires root privileges. Although you should never run Wine as root, you will need to install it
this way.

Uninstalling Wine from Source

To uninstall Wine from source, once again navigate to the same source folder that you used to install Wine using the
terminal. Then, run the following command:
# make uninstall

This command will require root privileges, and should remove all of the Wine files from your system. It will not,
however, remove your Wine configuration and applications located in your user home directory, so you are free to
install another version of Wine or delete that configuration by hand.

Chapter 3. Running Wine

This chapter will describe all aspects of running Wine, like e.g. basic Wine invocation, command line parameters of
various Wine support programs etc.

Basic usage: applications and control panel applets

Applications are installed under Wine the same way you would in Windows: by running the installer. You can just
accept the defaults for where to install, most installers will default to C:\Program Files, which is fine. If the
application installer requests it, you may find that Wine creates icons on your desktop and in your app menu. If that
happens, you can start the app by clicking on them.
The standard way to uninstall things is for the application to provide an uninstaller, usually registered with the
Add/Remove Programs control panel applet. To access the Wine equivalent, run the uninstaller program (it is
located in the programs/uninstaller/ directory in a Wine source directory) in a terminal:
$ wine uninstaller

Some programs install associated control panel applets, examples of this would be Internet Explorer and QuickTime.
You can access the Wine control panel by running in a terminal:
$ wine control

which will open a window with the installed control panel applets in it, as in Windows.
If the application doesnt install menu or desktop items, youll need to run the app from the command line.
Remembering where you installed to, something like:
$ wine "C:\Program Files\appname\appname.exe"

will probably do the trick. The path isnt case sensitive, but remember to include the double quotes. Some programs
dont always use obvious naming for their directories and executable files, so you might have to look inside the
Program Files directory to see what was put where.

How to run Wine

You can simply invoke the wine command to get a small help message:
Usage: wine PROGRAM [ARGUMENTS...]
wine --help
wine --version

Run the specified program

Display this help and exit
Output version information and exit

The first argument should be the name of the file you want wine to execute. If the executable is in the Path
environment variable, you can simply give the executable file name. However, if the executable is not in Path, you
must give the full path to the executable. For example, given a Path of the following:
Path="c:\windows;c:\windows\system;e:\;e:\test;f:\"

You could run the file c:\windows\system\foo.exe with:

$ wine foo.exe

However, you would have to run the file c:\myapps\foo.exe with this command:

Chapter 3. Running Wine

$ wine c:\\myapps\\foo.exe

(note the backslash-escaped \) or:

$ wine ~/.wine/drive_c/myapps/foo.exe

For details on running text mode (CUI) executables, read the section below.

Explorer-like graphical Wine environments

If you prefer using a graphical interface to manage your files you might want to consider using winefile. This
Winelib application comes with Wine and can be found with the other Wine programs. It is a useful way to view your
drive configuration and locate files, plus you can execute programs directly from winefile. Please note that many
functions are not yet implemented.

Wine Command Line Options

--help
Shows a small command line help page.

--version
Shows the Wine version string. Useful to verify your installation.

Environment variables
WINEDEBUG=channels
Wine isnt perfect, and many Windows applications still dont run without bugs under Wine (but then, a lot of
programs dont run without bugs under native Windows either!). To make it easier for people to track down the
causes behind each bug, Wine provides a number of debug channels that you can tap into.
Each debug channel, when activated, will trigger logging messages to be displayed to the console where you invoked
wine. From there you can redirect the messages to a file and examine it at your leisure. But be forewarned! Some
debug channels can generate incredible volumes of log messages. Among the most prolific offenders are relay
which spits out a log message every time a win32 function is called, win which tracks windows message passing,
and of course all which is an alias for every single debug channel that exists. For a complex application, your debug
logs can easily top 1 MB and higher. A relay trace can often generate more than 10 MB of log messages, depending
on how long you run the application. (Youll want to check out RelayExclude registry key to modify what the
relay trace reports). Logging does slow down Wine quite a bit, so dont use WINEDEBUG unless you really do
want log files.
Within each debug channel, you can further specify a message class, to filter out the different severities of errors. The
four message classes are: trace, fixme, warn, err.
To turn on a debug channel, use the form class+channel. To turn it off, use class-channel. To list more than one
channel in the same WINEDEBUG option, separate them with commas. For example, to request warn class
messages in the heap debug channel, you could invoke wine like this:
$ WINEDEBUG=warn+heap wine program_name

Chapter 3. Running Wine

If you leave off the message class, Wine will display messages from all four classes for that channel:
$ WINEDEBUG=heap wine program_name

If you wanted to see log messages for everything except the relay channel, you might do something like this:
$ WINEDEBUG=+all,-relay wine program_name

You can find a list of the debug channels and classes at DebugChannels (http://wiki.winehq.org/DebugChannels).
More channels will be added to (or subtracted from) later versions.
For more details about debug channels, check out the The Wine Developers Guide
(http://www.winehq.org/docs/winedev-guide/).

WINEDLLOVERRIDES=DLL Overrides
Its not always possible to run an application on builtin DLLs. Sometimes native DLLs simply work better. Although
these DLL overrides can be set using winecfg you might want to use the WINEDLLOVERRIDES environment
variable to set them.
Examples:
$ WINEDLLOVERRIDES="comdlg32,shell32=n,b" wine program_name

Try to load comdlg32 and shell32 as native Windows DLLs first and try the builtin version if the native load fails.
$ WINEDLLOVERRIDES="comdlg32,shell32=n;c:\\foo\\bar\\baz=b" wine program_name

Try to load the comdlg32 and shell32 libraries as native windows DLLs. Furthermore, if an application requests to
load c:\foo\bar\baz.dll load the builtin library baz.
$ WINEDLLOVERRIDES="comdlg32=b,n;shell32=b;comctl32=n;oleaut32=" wine program_name

Try to load comdlg32 as builtin first and try the native version if the builtin load fails; load shell32 always as
builtin and comctl32 always as native. oleaut32 will be disabled.
For more information about DLL overrides, please refer to the DLL overrides section of this guide.

WINEARCH
Specifies the Windows architecture to support. It can be set either to win32 (support only 32-bit applications), or to
win64 (support both 64-bit applications and 32-bit ones in WoW64 mode). The architecture supported by a given
Wine prefix is set at prefix creation time and cannot be changed afterwards. When running with an existing prefix,
Wine will refuse to start if WINEARCH doesnt match the prefix architecture.

OSS Audio Driver Settings

If you are using the OSS audio driver and you have multiple devices, (i.e. /dev/dsp*, /dev/mixer*) you can
specify which one you want to use with the following environment variables:

AUDIODEV=audio device
MIXERDEV=mixer device
MIDIDEV=MIDI device

As an example:
$ AUDIODEV=/dev/dsp4 MIXERDEV=/dev/mixer1 MIDIDEV=/dev/midi3 wine program_name

10

Chapter 3. Running Wine

wineserver Command Line Options

wineserver usually gets started automatically by Wine whenever the first Wine process gets started. However,
wineserver has some useful command line options that you can add if you start it up manually, e.g. via a user login
script or so.

-d n
Sets the debug level for debug output in the terminal that wineserver got started in at level n. In other words:
everything greater than 0 will enable wineserver specific debugging output.

-h
Display wineserver command line options help message.

-k [n]
Kill the current wineserver, optionally with signal n.

-p [n]
This parameter makes wineserver persistent, optionally for n seconds. It will prevent wineserver from shutting
down immediately.
Usually, wineserver quits almost immediately after the last Wine process using this wineserver terminated.
However, since wineserver loads a lot of things on startup (such as the whole Windows registry data), its startup
might be so slow that its very useful to keep it from exiting after the end of all Wine sessions, by making it persistent.

-w
This parameter makes a newly started wineserver wait until the currently active instance terminates.

Setting Windows/DOS environment variables

Your program might require some environment variable to be set properly in order to run successfully. In this case
you need to set this environment variable in the Linux shell, since Wine will pass on the entire shell environment
variable settings to the Windows environment variable space. Example for the bash shell (other shells may have a
different syntax!):
export MYENVIRONMENTVAR=myenvironmentvarsetting

This will make sure your Windows program can access the MYENVIRONMENTVAR environment variable once
you start your program using Wine. If you want to have MYENVIRONMENTVAR set permanently, then you can
place the setting into /etc/profile, or also ~/.bashrc when using bash.
Note however that there are some exceptions to the rule: If you want to change the PATH, SYSTEM or TEMP
variables, then of course you cant modify it that way, since this will alter the Unix environment settings. Instead,
you should set them into the registry. To set them you should launch wine regedit and then go to the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Environment

key. Now you can create or modify the values of the variables you need

11

Chapter 3. Running Wine

"System" = "c:\\windows\\system"

This sets up where the Windows system files are. The Windows system directory should reside below the directory
used for the Windows setting. Thus when using /usr/local/wine_c_windows as Windows path, the system
directory would be /usr/local/wine_c/windows/system. It must be set with no trailing slash, and you must be
sure that you have write access to it.
"Temp" = "c:\\temp"

This should be the directory you want your temp files stored in, /usr/local/wine_c/temp in our previous
example. Again, no trailing slash, and write access!!!
"Path" = "c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system;c:\\blanco"

Behaves like the PATH setting on UNIX boxes. When Wine is run like wine sol.exe, if sol.exe resides in a
directory specified in the Path setting, Wine will run it (of course, if sol.exe resides in the current directory, Wine
will run that one). Make sure it always has your windows directory and system directory (for this setup, it must
contain "c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system").

Text mode programs (CUI: Console User Interface)

Text mode programs are program which output is only made out of text (surprise!). In Windows terminology, they
are called CUI (Console User Interface) executables, by opposition to GUI (Graphical User Interface) executables.
Win32 API provide a complete set of APIs to handle this situation, which goes from basic features like text printing,
up to high level functionalities (like full screen editing, color support, cursor motion, mouse support), going through
features like line editing or raw/cooked input stream support
Given the wide scope of features above, and the current usage in Un*x world, Wine comes out with three different
ways for running a console program (aka a CUI executable):

bare streams

wineconsole with user backend

wineconsole with curses backend

The names here are a bit obscure. bare streams means that no extra support of Wine is provided to map between
the Unix console access and Windows console access. The two other ways require the use of a specific Wine
program (wineconsole) which provide extended facilities. The following table describes what you can do (and
cannot do) with those three ways.
Table 3-1. Basic differences in consoles
Function
How to run (assuming
executable is called
foo.exe)

Bare streams

Wineconsole with user Wineconsole with

backend
curses backend

$ wine foo.exe

$ wineconsole foo.exe
$ wineconsole -- --backend=user
You can also
foo.exe
use

--backend=curses as an

option
Good support for line
oriented CUI applications
(which print information
line after line)

Yes

Yes

Yes

12

Chapter 3. Running Wine

Function

Bare streams

Wineconsole with user Wineconsole with

backend
curses backend

Good support for full

screen CUI applications
(including but not limited
to color support, mouse
support...)

No

Yes

Yes

Can be run even if X11 is

not running

Yes

No

Yes

Implementation

Maps the standard

Windows streams to the
standard Unix streams
(stdin/stdout/stderr)

wineconsole will create a

new window (hence
requiring the user32 DLL
is available) where all
information will be
displayed

wineconsole will use

existing Unix console
(from which the program is
run) and with the help of
the curses/ncurses
library take control of all
the terminal surface for
interacting with the user

Known limitations

Will produce strange

behavior if two (or more)
Windows consoles are used
on the same Un*x
terminal.

Configuration of CUI executables

When wineconsole is used, several configuration options are available. Wine (as Windowses do) stores, on a per
application basis, several options in the registry. This let a user, for example, define the default screen-buffer size he
would like to have for a given application.
As of today, only the user backend allows you to edit those options (we dont recommend editing by hand the
registry contents). This edition is fired when a user right clicks in the console (this popups a menu), where you can
either choose from:

Default: this will edit the settings shared by all applications which havent been configured yet. So, when an
application is first run (on your machine, under your account) in wineconsole, it will inherit these default settings.
Afterwards, the application will have its own settings, that youll be able to modify at your will.
Properties: this will edit the applications settings. When youre done, with the edition, youll be prompted
whether you want to:
1. Keep these modified settings only for this session (next time you run the application, you will not see the
modification youve just made).
2. Use the settings for this session and save them as well, so that next you run your application, youll use these
new settings again.

Heres the list of the items you can configure, and their meanings:

13

Chapter 3. Running Wine

Table 3-2. Wineconsole configuration options

Configuration option

Meaning

Cursor size

Defines the size of the cursor. Three options are

available: small (33% of character height), medium
(66%) and large (100%)

Popup menu

Its been said earlier that wineconsole configuration

popup was triggered using a right click in the consoles
window. However, this can be an issue when the
application you run inside wineconsole expects the right
click events to be sent to it. By ticking Control or Shift
you select additional modifiers on the right click for
opening the popup. For example, ticking Shift will send
events to the application when you right click the
window without Shift being hold down, and open the
window when you right-click while Shift being hold
down.

Quick edit

This tick box lets you decide whether left-click mouse

events shall be interpreted as events to be sent to the
underlying application (tick off) or as a selection of
rectangular part of the screen to be later on copied onto
the clipboard (tick on).

History

This lets you pick up how many commands you want

the console to recall. You can also drive whether you
want, when entering several times the same command potentially intertwined with others - whether you want
to store all of them (tick off) or only the last one (tick
on).

Police

The Police property sheet allows you to pick the default

font for the console (font file, size, background and
foreground color).

Screenbuffer & window size

The console as you see it is made of two different parts.

On one hand theres the screenbuffer which contains all
the information your application puts on the screen, and
the window which displays a given area of this screen
buffer. Note that the window is always smaller or of the
same size than the screen buffer. Having a strictly
smaller window size will put on scrollbars on the
window so that you can see the whole screenbuffer
content.

Close on exit

If its ticked, then wineconsole will exit when the

application within terminates. Otherwise, itll remain
opened until the user manually closes it: this allows
seeing the latest information of a program after it has
terminated.

14

Chapter 3. Running Wine

Configuration option
Edition mode

Meaning
When the user enter commands, he or she can choose
between several edition modes: Emacs: the same
keybindings as under emacs are available. For
example, Ctrl-A will bring the cursor to the beginning
of the edition line. See your emacs manual for the
details of the commands.
Win32: these are the standard Windows console
key-bindings (mainly using arrows).

15

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

Most of the most common configuration changes can be done with the winecfg tool. Well go through an easy,
step-by-step introduction to winecfg and outline the options available. In the next section well go over more
advanced changes you can make using regedit as well as provide a complete reference to all Wine configuration
settings. Finally, some things you might want to configure fall out of the scope of winecfg and regedit, and well go
over those.

Using Winecfg
In the past, Wine used a special configuration file that could be found in ~/.wine/config. If you are still using a
version of Wine that references this file (older than June, 2005) you should upgrade before doing anything else. All
settings are now stored directly in the registry and accessed by Wine when it starts.
Winecfg should have been installed on your computer along with the rest of the Wine programs. If you cant figure
out how to start it, try running winecfg.
When the program starts youll notice there are tabs along the top of the window for:

Applications

Libraries

Graphics

Desktop Integration

Drives

Audio

About

Changing settings in the Applications and Libraries tabs will have the most impact on getting an application to run.
The other settings focus on getting Wine itself to behave the way you want it to.
Note: The Applications, Libraries, and Graphics tabs are linked together! If you have Default Settings selected
under Applications, all of the changes made within the Libraries and Graphics tabs will be changed for all
applications. If youve configured a specific application under the Applications tab and have it selected, then any
changes made in Libraries or Graphics will affect only that application. This allows for custom settings for specific
applications.

Application Settings
Wine has the ability to mimic the behavior of different versions of Windows. In general, the biggest difference is
whether Wine behaves as a Win9x version or an NT version. Some applications require a specific behavior in order
to function and changing this setting may cause a buggy app to work. Wine default Windows version is Windows XP.
Some applications may perform better if you choose Windows 98.
Within the tab youll notice there is a Default Settings entry. If you select that youll see the current default Windows
Version for all applications. A troublesome application is best configured separately from the Default Settings. To do
that:
1. Click on the Add application button.
2. Browse until you locate the executable.

16

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

3. After its been added you can choose the specific Windows version Wine will emulate for that application.

Libraries Settings
Likewise, some applications require specific libraries in order to run. Wine reproduces the Windows system libraries
(so-called native DLLs) with completely custom versions designed to function exactly the same way but without
requiring licenses from Microsoft. Wine has many known deficiencies in its built-in versions, but in many instances
the functionality is sufficient. Using only builtin DLLs ensures that your system is Microsoft-free. However, Wine
has the ability to load native Windows DLLs.

DLL Overrides
Its not always possible to run an application on builtin DLLs, so sometimes native versions will be recommended as
a workaround for a specific problem. Some may be directly copied to the directory configured as
c:\windows\system32 (more on that in the drives section) while others may require an installer, see the next
section on winetricks. Native versions of these DLLs do not work: kernel32.dll, gdi32.dll, user32.dll, and
ntdll.dll. These libraries require low-level Windows kernel access that simply doesnt exist within Wine.
With that in mind, once youve copied the DLL you just need to tell Wine to try to use it. You can configure Wine to
choose between native and builtin DLLs at two different levels. If you have Default Settings selected in the
Applications tab, the changes you make will affect all applications. Or, you can override the global settings on a
per-application level by adding and selecting an application in the Applications tab.
To add an override for FOO.DLL, enter FOO into the box labeled New override for library: and click on the Add
button. To change how the DLL behaves, select it within the Existing overrides: box and choose Edit. By default
the new load order will be native Windows libraries before Wine builtin ones (Native then Builtin). You can also
choose native only, builtin only, or disable it altogether.
DLLs usually get loaded in the following order:
1. The directory the program was started from.
2. The current directory.
3. The Windows system directory.
4. The Windows directory.
5. The PATH variable directories.

Notes About System or Missing DLLs

There are of course DLLs that Wine does not currently implement very well (or at all).
In case Wine complains about a missing DLL, you should check whether this file is a publicly available DLL or a
custom DLL belonging to your program. In the latter case, check that you have installed your program correctly.
Most often applications will assume that a required redistributable package has already been installed and
subsequently fail to run when the required dependencies are not met. For example:

err:module:import_dll Library MFC42.DLL (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Foo\\Bar.dll") no

Redistributable packages which install the necessary runtimes can be obtained through the use of winetricks
(http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks). Note these components are subject to their own license and are not part of the
Wine project. You should refer to the applications AppDB (http://appdb.winehq.org) entry for advice on what is
required.

17

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

Graphics Settings
There are basically five different graphics settings you can configure. For most people the defaults are fine.
The first setting primarily affect games and is somewhat self-explanatory. You can prevent the mouse from leaving
the window of a full-screen program (e.g. a game) and the default is to not have that box checked. That is mostly
needed when using a virtual desktop.
You may find it helpful to tick Emulate a virtual desktop. In this case, all programs will run in a separate window.
You may find this useful as a way to test buggy games that change (possibly unsuccessfully) the screen resolution.
Confining them to a window can allow for more control over them at the possible expense of decreased usability.
Sizes you might want to try are 800x600 (the default) or 1024x768.

Drive Settings
Windows requires a fairly rigid drive configuration that Wine imitates. Most people are familiar with the standard
notation of the A: drive representing the floppy disk, the C: drive representing the primary system disk, etc. Wine
uses the same concept and maps those drives to the underlying native filesystem.
Wine drive configuration is relatively simple. In winecfg under the Drives tab youll see buttons to add and remove
available drives. When you choose to add a drive, a new entry will be made and a default drive mapping will appear.
You can change where this drive points to by changing whats in the Path: box. If youre unsure of the exact path
you can choose Browse to search for it. Removing a drive is as easy as selecting the drive and clicking Remove.
winecfg has the ability to automatically detect the drives available on your system. Its recommended you try this
before attempting to configure drives manually. Simply click on the Autodetect button to have Wine search for
drives on your system.
You may be interested in configuring your drive settings outside of winecfg, in which case youre in luck because its
quite easy. All of the drive settings reside in a special directory: ~/.wine/dosdevices. Each drive is simply a
link to where it actually resides. Wine automatically sets up two drives the first time you run Wine:
$ ls -la ~/.wine/dosdevices/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 wineuser wineuser
lrwxrwxrwx 1 wineuser wineuser

10 Jul 23 15:12 c: -> ../drive_c

1 Jul 23 15:12 z: -> /

To add another drive, for example your CD-ROM, just create a new link pointing to it:
$ ln -s /mnt/cdrom ~/.wine/dosdevices/d:

Take note of the DOS-style naming convention used for links - the format is a letter followed by a colon, such as a:.
So, if the link to your c: drive points to ~/.wine/drive_c, you can interpret references to
c:\windows\system32 to mean ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32.

Audio Settings
Wine can work with quite a few different audio subsystems. You can see the selected driver that Wine figures out for
you under the Audio tab.
You can manually select which device will be used for Output, Input, Voice output and Voice input. For example you
can choose the digital output of your sound device instead of the analog one.

Desktop Integration
Wine can load Windows themes if you have them available. While this certainly isnt necessary in order to use Wine
or applications, it does allow you to customize the look and feel of a program. Wine supports the newer MSStyles
type of themes. Unlike the older Microsoft Plus! style themes, the uxtheme engine supports special .msstyles files

18

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

that can retheme all of the Windows controls. This is more or less the same kind of theming that modern Linux
desktops have supported for years. If youd like to try this out:

1. Download a Windows XP theme. Be sure it contains a .msstyles file.

2. Use the Desktop Integration tab of winecfg to install and select the new theme.

Using the Registry and Regedit

All of the settings you change in winecfg, with exception of the drive settings, are ultimately stored in the registry. In
Windows, this is a central repository for the configuration of applications and the operating system. Likewise, Wine
implements a registry and some settings not found in Winecfg can be changed within it (theres actually more of a
chance youll need to dip into the registry to change the settings of an application than Wine itself).
Now, the fact that Wine itself uses the registry to store settings has been controversial. Some people argue that its
too much like Windows. To counter this there are several things to consider. First, its impossible to avoid
implementing a registry simply because applications expect to be able to store their settings there. In order for Wine
to store and access settings in a separate configuration file would require a separate set of code to basically do the
same thing as the Win32 APIs Wine already implements.

Registry Structure
Okay... with that out of the way, lets dig into the registry a bit to see how its laid out. The Windows registry is an
elaborate tree structure, and not even most Windows programmers are fully aware of how the registry is laid out,
with its different hives and numerous links between them; a full coverage is out of the scope of this document. But
here are the basic registry keys you might need to know about for now:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

This fundamental root key (in win9x its stored in the hidden file system.dat) contains everything pertaining
to the current Windows installation. This is often abbreviated HKLM.
HKEY_USERS

This fundamental root key (in win9x its stored in the hidden file user.dat) contains configuration data for
every user of the installation.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

This is a link to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes. It contains data describing things like file

associations, OLE document handlers, and COM classes.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER

This is a link to HKEY_USERS\your_username, i.e., your personal configuration.

Registry Files
Now, what youre probably wondering is how that translates into Wine structure. The registry layout described above
actually lives in three different files within each users ~/.wine directory:
system.reg

This file contains HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

19

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

user.reg

This file contains HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

userdef.reg

This file contains HKEY_USERS\.Default (i.e. the default user settings).

These files are automatically created the first time you use Wine. A set of global settings is stored in the wine.inf
file and is processed by the rundll32.exe program. The first time you run Wine the wine.inf file gets processed to
populate the initial registry. The registry is also updated automatically if wine.inf changes, for instance when
upgrading to a newer Wine version.
Note: Older Wine versions (before 1.0) required you to run the wineprefixcreate command manually to upgrade
your settings. This is no longer necessary.
It is not advisable to edit these files to modify the registry as they are managed by Wine internally. Use regedit.exe,
reg.exe or any program which uses the standard registry functions.

Using Regedit
An easy way to access and change the registry is with the regedit tool. Similar to the Windows program it replaces,
regedit serves to provide a system level view of the registry containing all of the keys. When you start it, youll
immediately notice that the cryptic keys displayed in the text file are organized in a hierarchical fashion.
To navigate through the registry, click on the keys on the left to drill down deeper. To delete a key, click on it and
choose Delete from the Edit menu. To add a key or value, locate where you want to put it and choose New from the
Edit menu. Likewise, you modify an existing key by highlighting it in the right-hand window pane and choosing
Modify from the Edit menu. Another way to perform these same actions is to right-click on the key or value.
Of particular interest to Wine users are the settings stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine. Most of the
settings you change within winecfg are written to this area of the registry.

System Administration Tips

With the above file structure, it is possible for a system administrator to configure the system so that a system Wine
installation (and applications) can be shared by all the users, and still let the users all have their own personalized
configuration. An administrator can, after having installed Wine and any Windows application software he wants the
users to have access to, copy the resulting system.reg and over to the global registry files (which we assume will
reside in /usr/local/etc here), with:
cd ~root/.wine
cp system.reg /usr/local/etc/wine.systemreg

and perhaps even symlink these back to the administrators account, to make it easier to install apps system-wide
later:
ln -sf /usr/local/etc/wine.systemreg system.reg

You might be tempted to do the same for user.reg as well, however that file contains user specific settings. Every
user should have their own copy of that file along with the permissions to modify it.
Youll want to pay attention to drive mappings. If youre sharing the system.reg file youll want to make sure the
registry settings are compatible with the drive mappings in ~/.wine/dosdevices of each individual user. As a
general rule of thumb, the closer you keep your drive mappings to the default configuration, the easier this will be to
manage. You may or may not be able to share some or all of the actual c: drive you originally installed the
application to. Some applications require the ability to write specific settings to the drive, especially those designed
for Windows 95/98/ME.

20

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

Note that the tools/wineinstall script used to do some of this if you installed Wine source as root, however it no
longer does.
A final word of caution: be careful with what you do with the administrator account - if you do copy or link the
administrators registry to the global registry, any user might be able to read the administrators preferences, which
might not be good if sensitive information (passwords, personal information, etc) is stored there. Only use the
administrator account to install software, not for daily work; use an ordinary user account for that.

Complete List of Registry Keys

Youll find an up-to-date list of useful registry keys and values (http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys) in the
wiki.

Other Things to Configure

This section is meant to cover the rest of the things you can configure. It also serves as a collection of tips and tricks
to get the most out of using Wine.

Serial and Parallel Ports

Serial and parallel port configuration is very similar to drive configuration - simply create a symbolic link in
~/.wine/dosdevices with the name of the device. Windows serial ports follow a naming convention of the word
com followed by a number, such as com1, com2, etc. Similarly, parallel ports use lpt followed by a number, such as
lpt1. You should link these directly to the corresponding Unix devices, such as /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/lp0. Make
sure you have the needed access rights to that device. For example, to configure one serial port and one parallel port,
run the following commands:
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1
ln -s /dev/lp0 lpt1

Network Shares
Windows shares can be mapped into the unc/ directory so anything trying to access \\myserver\some\file will
look in ~/.wine/dosdevices/unc/myserver/some/file. For example, if you used Samba to mount
\\myserver \some on /mnt/smb/myserver /some then you can do
ln -s /mnt/smb/myserver /some unc/myserver /some

to make it available in Wine (dont forget to create the unc directory if it doesnt already exist).

Fonts
Font configuration, once a nasty problem, is now much simpler. If you have a collection of TrueType fonts in
Windows its simply a matter of copying the .ttf files into c:\windows\fonts.

Printers
Wine can interact directly with the local CUPS printing system to find the printers available on your system.
Configuring printers with Wine is as simple as making sure your CUPS configuration works. Wine still needs the lpr
command (from CUPS), when printing a document.

21

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

If you do not use CUPS, the old BSD-Printing system is used:

All Printers from /etc/printcap are installed automatically in Wine.

Wine needs a PPD file for every Printer (generic.ppd comes with Wine).

The lpr command is called when printing a document

Scanners
In Windows, scanners use the TWAIN API to access the underlying hardware. Wine builtin TWAIN DLL simply
forwards those requests to the Linux SANE libraries. So, to utilize your scanner under Wine youll first need to make
sure you can access it using SANE. After that youll need to make sure you have xscanimage available for use.
Currently it is shipped with the sane-frontends package but it may not be installed with your distribution.
Scanner access is currently known to have problems. If you find it works for you, please consider updating this
section of the user guide to provide details on using SANE with Wine.

ODBC Databases
The ODBC system within Wine, as with the printing system, is designed to hook across to the Unix system at a high
level. Rather than ensuring that all the Windows code works under Wine it uses a suitable Unix ODBC provider, such
as unixODBC. Thus if you configure Wine to use the built-in odbc32.dll, that Wine DLL will interface to your
Unix ODBC package and let that do the work, whereas if you configure Wine to use the native odbc32.dll it will
try to use the native ODBC32 drivers etc.

Configuring ODBC on Unix

The first step in using a Unix ODBC system with Wine is, of course, to get the Unix ODBC system working itself.
This may involve downloading code or binary packages etc. There are several Unix ODBC systems available such as
unixODBC or an ODBC-ODBC bridge that can be used to access a Microsoft Access database. Typically such
systems will include a tool, such as isql, which will allow you to access the data from the command line so that you
can check that the system is working.
The next step is to hook the Unix ODBC library to the Wine built-in odbc32 DLL. The built-in odbc32 (currently)
looks to the environment variable LIB_ODBC_DRIVER_MANAGER for the name of the ODBC library. For
example:
LIB_ODBC_DRIVER_MANAGER=/usr/lib/libodbc.so.1.0.0

If that environment variable is not set then it looks for a library called libodbc.so and so you can add a symbolic
link to equate that to your own library. For example as root you could run the commands:
# ln -s libodbc.so.1.0.0 /usr/lib/libodbc.so
# /sbin/ldconfig

The last step in configuring this is to ensure that Wine is set up to run the built-in version of odbc32.dll, by
modifying the DLL configuration. This built-in DLL merely acts as a stub between the calling code and the Unix
ODBC library.
If you have any problems then you can use WINEDEBUG=+odbc32 command before running Wine to trace what is
happening. One word of warning: some programs actually cheat a little and bypass the ODBC library. For example
the Crystal Reports engine goes to the registry to check on the DSN. The fix for this is documented at unixODBC site
where there is a section on using unixODBC with Wine.

22

Chapter 4. Configuring Wine

Using Windows ODBC drivers

Native ODBC drivers have been reported to work for many types of databases including MSSQL and Oracle. In fact,
some like MSSQL can only be accessed on Linux through a Winelib app. Rather than just copying DLL files, most
ODBC drivers require a Windows-based installer to run to properly configure things such as registry keys.
In order to set up MSSQL support you will first need to download and run the mdac_typ.exe installer from
www.microsoft.com. In order to configure your ODBC connections you must then run CLICONFG.EXE and
ODBCAD32.EXE under Wine. You can find them in the windows\system directory after mdac_typ runs. Compare
the output of these programs with the output on a native Windows machine. Some things, such as protocols, may be
missing because they rely on being installed along with the operating system. If so, you may be able to copy missing
functionality from an existing Windows installation as well as any registry values required. A native Windows
installation configured to be used by Wine should work the same way it did when run natively.
Types successfully tested under Wine:
DB Type

Usefulness

MS SQL

100%

Please report any other successes to the wine-devel (mailto:wine-devel@winehq.org) mailing list.

23

Chapter 5. Troubleshooting / Reporting bugs

What to do if some program still doesnt work?
There are times when youve been trying everything, you even killed a cat at full moon and ate it with rotten garlic
and foul fish while doing the Devils Dance, yet nothing helped to make some damn program work on some Wine
version. Dont despair, were here to help you... (in other words: how much do you want to pay?)

Verify your Wine configuration

Look at the output from wine --version to make sure youre running a recent version of Wine. Launch winecfg
and look over the settings to make sure you have settings that look normal. Look in ~/.wine/dosdevices to make
sure your c: points to where you think it should.

Use different Windows version settings

In several cases using different Windows version settings can help.

Use different startup paths

The following sometimes helps, too:
wine x :\\full\\path\\to\\prg.exe
wine ~/.wine/drive_c/full/path/to/prg.exe
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/full/path/to/ && wine prg.exe

Fiddle with DLL configuration

Run with WINEDEBUG=+loaddll to figure out which DLLs are being used, and whether theyre being loaded as
native or built-in. Then make sure you have proper native DLL files in your configured C:\windows\system32
directory and fiddle with DLL load order settings at command line or with winecfg.

Check your system environment!

Just an idea: could it be that your Wine build/execution environment is broken? Make sure that there are no problems
whatsoever with the packages that Wine depends on (gcc, glibc, X libraries, OpenGL (!), ...)

Use different GUI (Window Manager) modes

Instruct Wine via winecfg to use either desktop mode, or normal managed mode. That can make a lot of difference,
too.

Check your app!

Maybe your app is using some kind of copy protection? Many copy protections currently dont work on Wine. Some
might work in the future, though. (the CD-ROM layer isnt really full-featured yet).

24

Chapter 5. Troubleshooting / Reporting bugs

Reconfigure Wine
Sometimes Wine installation process changes and new versions of Wine account on these changes. This is especially
true if your setup was created long time ago. Rename your existing ~/.wine directory for backup purposes. Use the
setup process thats recommended for your Wine distribution to create new configuration. Use information in old
~/.wine directory as a reference. Later you can remove the new ~/.wine directory and rename your old one back.

Check out further information

There is a really good chance that someone has already tried to do the same thing as you. You may find the following
resources helpful:

Search WineHQ Application Database (http://appdb.winehq.org) to check for any tips relating to the program. If
your specific version of the program isnt listed you may find a different one contains enough information to help
you out.

Google (http://www.google.com) can be useful depending on how you use it. You may find it helpful to search
Google Groups (http://groups.google.com), in particular the comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine group.

Freenode.net (http://www.freenode.net) hosts an IRC channel for Wine. You can access it by using any IRC client
such as Xchat. The settings youll need are:
server
irc.freenode.net
port
6667
channel #winehq

If you have a program that requires a redistributable runtime to be installed, e.g. for mfc42.dll, Visual Basic and
so on, winetricks can be used to supply this. Note, these components are subject to their own license and are not
part of the Wine project. For further information on winetricks see the winetricks wiki entry
(http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks).

Wine forums (http://forums.winehq.org/) and mailing lists (http://www.winehq.org/site/forums) may also help,
especially wine-users. The wine-devel list may be appropriate depending on the type of problem you are
experiencing. If you post to wine-devel you should be prepared to do a little work to help diagnose the problem.
Read the section below to find out how to debug the source of your problem.

If all else fails, you may wish to investigate commercial versions of Wine to see if your application is supported.

Debug it!
Finding the source of your problem is the next step to take. There is a wide spectrum of possible problems ranging
from simple configurations issues to completely unimplemented functionality in Wine. The next section will describe
how to file a bug report and how to begin debugging a crash. For more information on using Wine debugging
facilities be sure to read the Wine Developers Guide.

How To Report A Bug

Please find all information about reporting a bug on the main page of Wine Bugzilla (http://bugs.winehq.org/).

25

Glossary
Binary
A file which is in machine executable, compiled form: hex data (as opposed to a source code file).

Distribution
A distribution is usually the way in which some vendor ships operating system CDs (usually mentioned in the
context of Linux). A Linux environment can be shipped in lots of different configurations: e.g. distributions
could be built to be suitable for games, scientific applications, server operation, desktop systems, etc.

DLL
A DLL (Dynamic Link Library) is a file that can be loaded and executed by programs dynamically. Basically
its an external code repository for programs. Since usually several different programs reuse the same DLL
instead of having that code in their own file, this dramatically reduces required storage space. A synonym for a
DLL would be library.

Editor
An editor is usually a program to create or modify text files. There are various graphical and text mode editors
available on Linux.
Examples of graphical editors are: nedit, gedit, kedit, xemacs, gxedit.
Examples of text mode editors are: joe, ae, emacs, vim, vi. In a terminal, simply run them via:
$ editorname filename

Environment variable
Environment variables are text definitions used in a Shell to store important system settings. In a bash shell (the
most commonly used one in Linux), you can view all environment variables by executing:
set

If you want to change an environment variable, you could run:

export MYVARIABLE =mycontent

For deleting an environment variable, use:

unset MYVARIABLE

Git
Git is a fast version control system, originally written for use with large repositories, such as the Linux Kernel
source. See the Git chapter in the Wine Developers Guide for detailed usage information.

26

Glossary

Package
A package is a compressed file in a distribution specific format. It contains the files for a particular program you
want to install. Packages are usually installed via the dpkg or rpm package managers.

root
root is the account name of the system administrator. In order to run programs as root, simply open a Terminal

window, then run:

$ su -

This will prompt you for the password of the root user of your system, and after that you will be able to system
administration tasks that require special root privileges. The root account is indicated by the
#

prompt, whereas $ indicates a normal user account.

Shell
A shell is a tool to enable users to interact with the system. Usually shells are text based and command line
oriented. Examples of popular shells include bash, tcsh and ksh. Wine assumes that for Wine installation tasks,
you use bash, since this is the most popular shell on Linux. Shells are usually run in a Terminal window.

Source code
Source code is the code that a program consists of before the program is being compiled, i.e. its the original
building instructions of a program that tell a compiler what the program should look like once its been
compiled to a Binary.

Terminal
A terminal window is usually a graphical window that one uses to execute a Shell. If Wine asks you to open a
terminal, then you usually need to click on an icon on your desktop that usually shows a big black window.
Wine assumes youre using the bash shell, so if your terminal happens to use a different shell program, simply
type bash in the terminal window.

27